WhatsApp for iOS Receives the Forwarded Tag and Forward Limit for Messages

This year WhatsApp has been making quick and significant updates to its application on both Android and iOS. Many updates have been brought because of the application’s popularity in India. Notably, WhatsApp also remains the most used messaging platform in the world and is owned by the Social Media giant Facebook. In the light of recent events which happened in India, it was revealed that WhatsApp acted as a catalyst to the violence since the platform was used to recklessly forward messages. This incident pushed the company to put a limit on the number of users a message could be forwarded to apart from introducing a new forwarded tag which informed the recipient that the text was not written by the user initially. The forward limit and the forwarded tag have now been pushed to iOS as well.

The update was first spotted on Android where the forwarded tag was seen over the messages along with a small forwarded arrow which informed the recipient that some other person originally drafted the text and not the sender. This step was taken to prevent the unprecedented spreading of fake news on the platform.

There are also some minor bug fixes for the app with the latest update for iOS. The Facebook-owned company also said that it would be doing away with the quick forward option which sits next to the media on WhatsApp chats and allows the users to quickly forward a media to their contacts. Users who wish to see these updates on their iPhones can download the latest version 2.18.81 from iTunes.

As of late, WhatsApp has been increasing the functionality of its application. The messaging giant has talked about some exciting new features on the app like the suspicious link detection feature which remains in the testing phase. The function will warn the users of suspicious links and unusual characters in any URL which they receive. It is expected to roll out to the users in a few weeks.

Also, WhatsApp recently introduced the group video calling feature which allows up to 4 users to connect in a video call simultaneously. Using this new group video call functionality, WhatsApp seeks to give competition to the likes of Skype.

Arpit spends his day closely following the telecom and tech industry. A music connoisseur and a night owl, he also takes a deep interest in the Indian technology start-up scene and spends rest of his time spilling poetry and stories on paper.